


Once More, with Feeling

by subjunctive



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-29
Updated: 2011-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-21 23:09:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subjunctive/pseuds/subjunctive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Monica's life was a movie, it would look something like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once More, with Feeling

Casting Call: Looking for our heroine - a young woman with a big family. She carries inside a little knot of shame over where she comes from and is eager to make something of herself. She wants to be _big_. _What an inspirational movie!_ the audience expects. The first person from her family to go to college, she majors in business administration at a local university - what better way to make money, she reasons. She agonizes over her class schedule choices every semester, determined to stay on track and to prepare for every eventuality.

The Conflict: Hurricane Katrina, something even she couldn't plan for, happens, throwing our heroine into emotional turmoil. The university shuts down, the local economy implodes, and her student loans come due. Suddenly the only available jobs are behind food service counters, counting out chicken nuggets, coin change, and lost dreams one at a time.

The Resolution: There isn't one. It's all very postmodern and _avant-garde_ or whatever, but come on, this is her _life_ here. She was supposed to be going places - preferably far, far away. Now her life just sort of sits in one place, like a car stalled out on the highway. All her options, all those doors that used to be laid out within fingertips' reach? Yeah, they're gone. Vanished like the mist after a storm. Now instead of fantasizing about Fortune 500 companies, she daydreams about the different choices she could have made: gone to school somewhere else, gotten better scholarships, even (she feels a little guilty about this, but angry too) cared less about her family. The only thing is, you can't re-take the scenes you've already shot. Those are the rules, here.

The Theme: When Nana leans over her arm of her rocker and tells her, "God is in control, sweetie," it's so hard not to answer her. To tell the _truth_. Instead, she seals her lips and thinks bitterly: _If God is the director of this movie, he ain't getting any Academy Awards._ That's for sure.

The Eleventh-Hour Twist: Her cousin figures it out before her, but by then her mind is working too far ahead to feel irritated by his creepy-cute intelligence. She's too occupied by the the fact that there are things she can _do_ now. Like have a future that doesn't end in managing a fast-food joint. It feels a little like someone dropped a whole new self in her lap, gift-wrapped. Or like finding a twenty-dollar bill in her pocket after a long day.

The Sequel: Coming Soon.


End file.
